Answered By: APUS Librarians

Last Updated: Jun 05, 2018Views: 9470

Search engines search the entire world wide web -- a sea of entertainment, news, social networking and information of all kinds. Whether you prefer Google, Bing or Yahoo -- you probably use a search engine every single day.

Now that so many books, journals, magazines and newspapers are being published on the internet, your favorite search engine can also dig up information to help you in your college classes. But, since publishers still need to make a living, books or articles that you come across via a search engine may not be free. And, it's often surprisingly hard to tell which websites are appropriate for college-level research.

Thelibrary's databases, on the other hand, were made especially for college-level research: they search collections of journals, magazines, newspapers, ebooks (and more!) -- often focused on a particular subject. They also give you, as an AMU or APU student, quick full-text access to hundreds of thousands of subscription-only journals and ebooks. For that reason, librarians sometimes call subscription databases "the deep web," because they let you dig further into the scholarly literature than an "open web" search engine can. Not to mention their powerful limiting options that allow you to specify exactly what you're looking for (source type, peer-reviewed, popular, publication date, etc.).

Browse the table below to see some of the ways that databases and search engines differ:

Library Databases

Search Engines

What you're searching:

Sources published by well-known publishing companies, universities, research groups, etc. -- such as: